Richard Crompton is a novelist with a background in print, radio and television journalism. He was a producer for the BBC and Kenya Bureau Chief for CNBC Africa. He has lived in East Africa since 2005 and reported from across the continent. Richard has a BA in Language and Literature from the University of Manchester and an MA (distinction) in Creative Writing from the University of Lancaster.
He is the winner of the 2010 Daily Telegraph ghost story competition and the author of The Honey Guide (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2013), published in the US as Hour Of The Red God (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). His work has been called “compulsive” by Ian Rankin, “impressive” by the Wall Street Journal and “outstanding” by The Guardian. He currently lives in Nairobi.
The Honey Guide (Published as Hour of the Red God in the US)
Nairobi, 2007. In Africa’s sprawling mega-city, a small elite holds power over an impoverished, restless, majority. Corruption, exploitation, and ethnic rivalry are part of everyday life.
Amid claims of vote-rigging and fraud, the presidential elections could provide the spark that sets this city ablaze.
With chaos looming, few care about one dead prostitute. But Mollel does. For Mollel is a former Maasai warrior, and the dead girl was a Maasai too.
From the slums to the skyscrapers, from the suburbs to the sewers, Mollel begins to realise that there is more at stake that just this murder. But as he is forced to confront his turbulent past, he even begins to doubt his warrior’s instincts.
From its gripping opening to its devastating conclusion, the reader is plunged into a vividly evoked world where life and death hang in the balance. And in the Maasai hero, Mollel, a new detective icon is born.
More About Richard Crompton
Publisher’s Weekly, March 2013
Radio – BBC World Service, Weekend
Radio – BBC Radio 4, Front Row
How I made it (finally) into print – The Telegraph, February 2013